The inscription of the Szarvas Needle Case
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18349/MagyarNyelv.2021.4.403Keywords:
Carpathian Basin Rovash, computational palaeography, magic inscription, needle magic, scriptinformatics, Szarvas Needle CaseAbstract
This paper discusses previous attempts at deciphering the Rovash inscription on the Szarvas Needle Case and presents a new, suggested reading of that inscription. The authors examined the survival of the magic power of iron and needles in folk tradition, as well as the possible connections of the word üngür (used in the inscription of the Szarvas Needle Case). The grapheme set of the inscription of the Szarvas Needle Case was compared with the grapheme sets of several other Rovash script relics. It follows from the results obtained that the users of the Carpathian Basin Rovash (used for the inscription of the Szarvas Needle Case) or its predecessor, similarly to the users of the Székely-Hungarian Rovash and the Steppe Rovash or their predecessors, may have left Inner Asia after both the Aramaic-Middle Iranian scripts and the Brahmi script had affected their Rovash scripts or their supposed common ancestor, the Proto-Rovash script.
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